Spectre coupé signals Rolls-Royce shift to EVs

New two-door, due in 2023, will start firm’s move to an all-electric line-up by 2030

- FELIX PAGE

Rolls-Royce will soon begin on-road testing of its first all-electric production car, the Spectre, ahead of a market launch in the fourth quarter of 2023. By then, prototypes will have covered 150 million miles in a range of conditions, which Rolls-Royce equates to a simulated 400 years of use.

The Goodwood firm’s CEO, Torsten Müller-Ötvös, is adamant that the prototype previewed earlier this summer is a faithful representation of the production car. This means the Spectre will be a swept-back two-door grand tourer with a characteristically long bonnet and muscular proportions – characteristics that line it up as a viable replacement for the Wraith, which first went on sale in 2013.

Rolls-Royce has yet to confirm plans to end production of the Wraith, but it withdrew both the hard-top version and its Dawn soft-top sibling from sale in the US this year, suggesting a wind-down is imminent.

Notably, the Wraith and Dawn are the only models in the Rolls-Royce line-up to still use a platform developed entirely by parent company BMW – derived from the F01-generation 5 Series, which arrived in 2008. The larger Phantom, Ghost and Cullinan now use Rolls-Royce’s own Architecture of Luxury platform, which can house a pure-electric drivetrain and will eventually underpin every Rolls-Royce model.

The luxury brand first previewed its approach to electrification with 2011’s Phantom-based 102EX concept (see separate story, right), which was devised chiefly to determine the viability of EV power as a replacement for its large-capacity petrol engines.